The Los Angeles Times reports that Barack Obama’s campaign may use the word “Forward” as a campaign slogan. At first glance, that may be a nice sounding idea. But you have to wonder: have they been watching the cable news TV wars? Get ready for the slogan itself to be a topic if it does seems to become official or used repeatedly in ads.

The reason: in the ongoing battle of cable news branding anyone who watches cable news (or has followed all the stories about MSNBC’s big ad campaign to make this its slogan) knows that MSNBC has spent a lot of money to make “Lean Forward” it’s slogan to solidify its identity as the anti-Fox News of cable to set it part for the more even-handed CNN. If this is the slogan it’ll be an early Christmas gift to conservative talkers: they can do bits that mock Obama and MSNBC at the same time. Conservative bloggers will also have a field day.

It looks like the Obama campaign may have settled on its slogan for the 2012 election: “Forward.”

Four years ago Barack Obama ran on another one-word slogan, “Change.” Now, as President Obama prepares to hold the first public campaign rallies for his reelection, his team is giving a sense of what his pitch to votes will look like.

A seven-minute web video (watch below) lays out the precarious state of the nation when Obama took office in 2009 and the steps he took to begin addressing the critical challenges. Republicans have attempted to argue recently that Obama is not running on his record, but the video shows otherwise — the stimulus, the auto industry rescue, credit card and Wall Street reforms, healthcare reform, student loan reform, green energy investments, lower taxes for the middle class, equal pay for women and a repeal of the law banning gays from serving openly in the military make up the first half of the online advertisement.

“Hard work, determination, real results,” a narrator says.

But there’s then a pivot that signals how the president will use Republican obstructionism as a foil. Images of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity flash by, and then one of Mitt Romney.

“Instead of working together to lift America up, Republicans were waging a campaign to tear the president down,” the narrator continues. Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader of the Senate, is also shown saying that Republicans’ “top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term.”

The video then turns back to the president’s record, saying that despite the GOP efforts he “persevered here at home and as commander in chief.”

But does it seem to be a slogan in in the making? Sounds that way:

The advertisement winds down by again ticking off a laundry list of the administration’s accomplishments, before leading into the president’s recent speech where he outlined a “make or break moment for the middle class.” And then that one-word slogan, “Forward,” complete with the Obama campaign signature “O” logo.